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2014 is going to be an interesting year for Activision-Blizzard, and the company was brimming with confidence in their most recent earning call. Largely, for good reason.

Their 2013 numbers weren't exactly mind-boggling, as their fourth quarter revenue dropped 13 percent from $2.6 billion to $2.27 billion. And for this upcoming first quarter in 2014, Activision's own revenue forecast was below analyst's targets.

With that said, Activision is expecting a lot from a new collection of games set to make a big impact for the company in 2014.

Destiny

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has incredible expectations for Bungie's Destiny, the MMO-ish shooter out this September. He said with confidence the game will be the "best-selling new video game IP in history" and expects it to be Activision's "next billion dollar franchise."

That may sound like overconfidence for a brand new and untested series, but I'm not sure it's unwarranted. Landing Bungie to build Destiny was a huge get for Activision, similar to the way EA landed Respawn and Titanfall. Both franchises are hugely important to both companies, and it's going to be something of a heated battle to see which is the bigger series. I do think Titanfall's Xbox One exclusivity will limit it a bit, but that never stopped Halo from being a huge hit (and future Titanfall sequels may indeed be cross-platform).

Bungie has something like a ten-year plan for the Destiny universe, and it's clear the series is being designed for the long haul. That said, a lot is riding on the assumption that the game is going to be a revolutionary new property. Even if it is Bungie behind it, there's a chance it could fail to live up to expectations, but Activision just doesn't see that happening. Only being able to see footage from the game without actually playing it, it's hard to say, but the safe bet is that given the talent involved and the money behind it, the series will do very well. The fact that they didn't try something silly like making it a subscription based series bodes well for it, and avoids SWTOR-type expectations issues.

Hearthstone

Kotick also had many kind words to say about Hearthstone, the Warcraft-based collectible card game that recently went into open beta. It seems as if Hearthstone's popularity is even surprising Activision, and Kotick said that it could potentially be Blizzard's "fourth pillar," alongside Starcraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft.

The game puts up huge viewing numbers on Twitch, where amateur players watch better players stream and strategize. The free-to-play nature of the game makes it easy for anyone to play, but also easy for anyone to spend a fortune on packs trying to amass the best collection of cards. But since many of the game's target players have grown up with collectible card games, shelling out real life money for packs is a microtransaction they can deal with. Dedicated players can even spend hundreds of dollars on the free game, and be happy they did so.

Hearthstone is also tailor-made for tablet play, something that isn't available yet, but is absolutely being worked on as we speak. It could do incredibly well in this space, and if Flappy Bird can make $50K a day in revenue, I can only imagine how well a tablet version of Hearthstone could do.

Heroes of the Storm

Blizzard's new entry into the MOBA genre is still a ways off, but the fact that it's being frequently mentioned in this call implies that we'll probably at least see a beta in 2014. The game brings together iconic characters from all three major Blizzard franchises, StarCraft, Diablo and Warcraft, and has them battle in the style of games like DOTA or League of Legends.

The MOBA scene has an incredible amount of potential, and Riot Games' League of Legends recently revealed staggering player numbers of 27 million a day, with 67 million playing monthly. Blizzard generally doesn't make sub-par games (hold your Diablo 3 jokes), so it's reasonable to expect that Heroes of the Storm will be a worthy competitor in the space.

The game has the advantage of learning from League's mistakes and challenges, and if they keep the free-to-play, non-intrusive microtransaction model, it could do really well. In fact, between Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, I'm not even sure that Blizzard's famed "Project " is as necessary as it once was. It was always their next big thing on the horizon, but these two free-to-play games could grab even more players than say, another big budget MMO. Pricey MMOs aren't exactly the safest proposition anymore, and with Titan being "reworked" as of this year, perhaps Blizzard is pushing it way down the line, or just focusing onto these more promising projects instead.

Call of Duty

Obviously Call of Duty remains a huge priority for Activision, as the golden goose just keeps on giving, even if sales are starting to dip a bit. In a bit of big news, they're switching over to a three year development cycle instead of a two year one. To ensure the yearly COD machine keeps running like clockwork, they're adding a new developer, Sledgehammer, to join Treyarch and Activision in making Call of Duty titles. It seems a bit crowded to have three different lineages of Call of Duty going at once, but given how much the games reuse from past installments, and how popular they remain, it's easy money for Activision, and will be for quite a while.

Perhaps more interesting is what will happen with Activision's Call of Duty Online. They're partnering with free-to-play giant Tencent for the title, a Chinese company who owns a stake in Riot Games and also the hugely popular CrossFire, a free-to-play CounterStrike clone that is huge in Asia and sits on top of the digital revenue charts. Activision will try to make a big push into China with COD Online, and partnering with Tencent seems like the obvious move in order to get where they want to be in that market.

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I am impressed with Activision's prospects in 2014 with all the games we see here, including others we don't like the ever-popular Skylanders. They'll certainly have EA nipping at their heels who will have their own big titles on the way, from Titanfall to an unlimited arsenal of Star Wars games, but they're in a pretty good position with all these apparent hits in the pipeline. But nothing is a sure thing in this industry, and we've seen botched launches and bad decisions destroy promising titles before. Let's hope that doesn't happen this time around.